Through the years, my spider encounters have given me a few adventures. In case you don't know, I don’t want to see one or be anywhere close to one of those icky things. In fact, when I get to Heaven, I plan on asking Jesus if there was nothing else He could have created that would have eaten mosquitos and other bugs.

But there was one spider that amazed me so much that I had to watch it instead of screaming and running away.

Wind chimes hang all over my mom’s front porch. She collects them. My favorite one has a country blue house with white trim. It had two stories and its own miniature front porch. It's the cutest thing. I would have liked to have a house like that. Only bigger.

A couple of years ago, a few of us were standing and talking on mom’s front porch. I looked over to the blue house one and I was dismayed to see a brown spider had entwined its web between the chimes. Even though I was a good five feet away, I stepped back further. Those creepy things crawl very fast.

About that time, a wind hit us from an approaching storm. Pleasant harmonious clings and clangs from the chimes filled the air.

I gazed over to see how the wind was affecting the spider. I expected to see it clinging to a chime with its eight icky legs wrapped tightly around it. When I was a kid, I remember a spider that had woven its web around the antenna on my mom’s car. As Mom drove, I watched it from my seat. I thought the force of the wind would blow it away. Instead, the spider wrapped its legs tightly around the antenna, clinging on for dear life. Even when we were doing 55 MPH, that little guy didn’t let go. I was impressed by that. Can you imagine what a wind force that was to a creature that only weighed a few ounces? Talk about not giving up.

The brown spider quickly crawled up its web and away from the chimes as it swayed with the wind. I wondered what it was going to do when it reached the blue house. I didn’t see anything on the house it could cling on to so it could ride out the gusting wind.

When the spider reached the country blue house, it politely climbed over the white railing on the porch and went in through the door frame to inside the house as if it actually lived in it. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t witnessed it myself.

“Hey, did you all just see that? A spider just went inside the house!” I pointed to the country blue house, but nobody else standing there seemed too impressed by it.

Obviously, they didn’t have the imagination to appreciate how amazing that was. To me, it was like watching something out of a children’s animated movie. For a second, I imagined the spider having furniture in the house. Could you imagine what kind of recliner or footstool a spider would need? And what if it wanted to watch TV and eat popcorn? With all those hinged legs, I bet it could shove in the popcorn at lightning speed while it watched "Arachnophobia."

It's also amazing how that spider knew where to go when the storm came up. It didn’t have to stop and think about what to do. Similarly, the spider on the antenna instinctively knew to hang on with all it had when the wind hit it. Then, I thought about humans. How many times do we immediately panic and let go instead of being fearless and hanging on until the calm returns. So, hang on to the Lord with everything you have. Do it all the time and not just when you get hit by the winds of trouble. If God protected the little spiders, how much more will He do for you?

“Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:31 (KJV)